


halfway to home

by mcmeekin



Series: let me go home [6]
Category: Power Rangers, Power Rangers Samurai
Genre: Alcohol, Angst with a Happy Ending, Drinking, Multi, Polyamory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-06
Updated: 2017-12-06
Packaged: 2019-02-11 10:34:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,445
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12933414
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mcmeekin/pseuds/mcmeekin
Summary: "And there it is. The panic that seizes him when Jayden’s name is mentioned, even casually. It accentuates the lack of him in their lives and makes the harsh voice in the back of his head (which sounds suspiciously like Ji) yell 'you left him you left him you left him you left him.'"Five Samurai rangers leave Shiba house. One stays behind.(This is how they make it back.)





	halfway to home

**Author's Note:**

> phew  
> this is my first time writing something actually romantic so i've been fighting with it for exactly a year, but it's lived in my head for around three years now.  
> big shoutouts to pearl (kathillards) for reading this over and telling me it doesn't suck. also i finally wrote something happy-ish! yay!
> 
> anyway please take this so it doesn't haunt me any longer

Mike doesn’t go back to his parents’ house after everything ends.

The main reason, he thinks rationally, is because they sold it while he was away. They decided the house was too big without him there, so they sold it and moved to a quaint condo on the shoreline. They made it clear that he would be welcome there, but he doesn’t much care for places that don’t feel like home.

He tries to convince himself that’s why he left Shiba house in the first place.

 

Their numbers went from five to six to seven while they were rangers. Being four all of a sudden feels universally wrong. They meet up, whenever they can. They kind of all just shout their schedules at Mia every two weeks or so, then she’ll text them a time and place to be. And they’ll be there. He assumes (hopes, wishes, desperately muses) that Mia also invites Jayden.

He hasn’t shown up once.

“When does Antonio come back?” Emily asks. She always seems like she’s asking her cup instead of any of them, like if she murmurs to her hot coco, it will tell her that everything’s all right, and none of them are hurting. He wants to murmur to her hot coco, too. Or maybe he just wants to steal the murmur off her lips with his own. He’s getting better at categorizing his impulses, nowadays, but sometimes they still elude him.

“He docks in three days, at 6pm,” Kevin answers, almost immediately. Absurdly, Mike is reminded of an indignant Kevin, spluttering about Antonio not being a real samurai. And now he has his whereabouts memorized. Crazy, how life works out.

Everyone always feels tense when they talk about Antonio (it’s been six months, and he’s barely even emailed them), so Mia changes the subject, loudly asking Emily about the latest episode of some god awful reality TV show that they both watch. Kevin bitches and moans about the decline of American entertainment, so, of course, Mike immediately jumps to the girls’ defense despite never having seen the particular garbage show they’re talking about, and the look in Kevin’s eyes speaks to betrayal, but the teasing kind (Not the ‘hey I’m not really your red ranger this is my sister and you have to follow her now okay thanks bye’ kind of betrayal. Cause, you know, there’s a difference).

As the night winds down, the girls get up to go to the bathroom together (always together), leaving Kevin and Mike to stare into each other’s drinks instead of at each other. Mike realizes that there’s a chair in between them that’s empty, and he’s not sure who they’re saving it for.

“You have Antonio’s arrival time memorized,” Mike says before he can think better of it (he always says things before he can think better of it.)

“Something wrong with that?” Kevin asks, but it feels more like a statement. Maybe a threat. When was the last time Kevin threatened him?

Mike sees the girls emerge from the bathroom across the restaurant. He stands, pulling on his jacket. Kevin moves to do the same. “I don’t know, Kevin. Don’t you just ever get sick of waiting up for someone who’s never coming home?”

“Antonio’s coming home,” Kevin asserts.

Mike shrugs. “Where’s home?”

The girls’ giggles are within earshot now, so Mike just smiles at Kevin and tells him to have a good practice in the morning. He slings his arm around Emily and presses a kiss to the top of her head (because he can, because he’s allowed to). “Are we going home or for ice cream?” he asks, maybe too loudly, too happily.

But fake it ‘til you make it, right?

 

Mike used to idly fantasize about lighting the Shiba house on fire.

Not like he’d actually do it. Just musing about how fast it would all go up in flames if one person dropped a match.

He’s currently wondering the same thing about the tentative peace they’ve made amongst themselves.

Peace might not be the right word, but he’s not one for big vocabularies. He didn’t go to college, you know. Peace is the only word he can use to describe how sometimes fire will light in Mia’s eyes at something Mike says but will burn out as soon as she opens her mouth. Peace is the only word he can use to describe Emily squeezing his leg to keep him from snapping back at Kevin as he is too often wanting to do.

“You just miss how it used to be too much.” Emily has a habit of answering questions he didn’t ask. He loves her for it, he really does.

He smiles down at her (and it doesn’t quite feel right on his face) and pulls up their joined hands to kiss the back of her knuckles. “You know I don’t like living in the past, right?”

She shrugs, absentmindedly twisting her hand in his. “ _ I  _ miss how it used to be.”

Mike’s smile feels a little frozen. “Sorry, Em, but I don’t exactly miss blaring alarms and monster attacks. I much prefer holding your hand and walking down a quiet street.” He looks down at her. “Don’t you?”

She keeps her gaze ahead, looking a little unfocused. “I miss Shiba house. And Jayden.”

And there it is. The panic that seizes him when Jayden’s name is mentioned, even casually. It accentuates the lack of him in their lives and makes the harsh voice in the back of his head (which sounds suspiciously like Ji) yell _you left him you left him you left him_ _you left him._

 

The voice doesn’t stop that day, not even later when the quiet of the night presses against her (their) bedroom window, and Emily’s breathing next to him hasn’t quite evened out yet. His mind won’t stop racing, the voice won’t stop screaming, and his head will hurt in the morning at this rate.

And Emily, of course, can’t settle until he has, so she pulls herself closer to him, and asks “Do you remember when you first came to the farm and the chickens really hated you?” just to distract him, and God, what did any of them do to deserve her in their lives?

Laughing in bed with Emily has got to be in his top five favorite things to do (a comment which had Mia teasing him in the group text message for months). He really does pity the people who will never get to experience the calming effects of her giggle right next to their ear.

A little later, when his heartbeat feels back to normal, Emily asks, “Are you going to pick up Antonio from the docks?”

Mike sighs. “I don’t know, Em.”

“I’m going.” Quiet determination. He wishes he didn’t love that about her.

He’s staring at a crack in her (their) ceiling that looks suspiciously like her zord, but maybe that’s just the lighting. “I want to see Antonio, you know I do, but… He probably will want to go see—He’ll probably want to go to Shiba house first thing. And I’m not sure I’m ready to go home yet.”

Emily smiles against his neck.

“What is it?” he asks.

“Home. You just called it home.”

He doesn’t answer her, just starts tracing the shape of the crack in the ceiling on her back with his ring finger.

“You know, there’s no shame in going home again,” is the last thing she murmurs before she’s definitely asleep.

Sleep comes more easily, once she’s resting.

Emily’s right—there’s no shame in going home again except for the shame he feels all the time every day, pressing down on his shoulder blades, weighing down his arms, drowning him. He gets so confused sometimes that he will occasionally get angry at the actual physical  _ house _ . It’s a paper house filled with paper people. Paper promises. Paper protectors?  _ Paper zords _ , a voice that sounds a lot like Antonio mutters in the back of his head.

Maybe Mike’s just hallucinating him because he misses him.

 

He does end up going to pick Antonio up. They all do, of course, because they missed him so, so much, and Mike feels something unravel in his chest when he sees Antonio step off the ship, something nameless and too big for him to even try to unpack right now.

Mike often finds himself wondering how fate lined up their colors so perfectly. Wonders if gold was shiny just because it knew that one day Antonio would wear it, wonders how anyone can stand to look at him without getting the urge to squint at the light reflecting off of him. (Wonders if sunshine is yellow just because Emily is, wonders if he’s the only one who feels like he’s drowning when he looks at Kevin, wonders if pink only glows because Mia does.)

(Wonders if red burned before the Shibas did.)

 

Antonio forces them into a ridiculous group hug situation and does not stop talking once from the moment he steps off the boat to when they drop him off outside his apartment with promises to get drinks the next night when Antonio’s caught up on sleep.

Antonio does not mention going by Shiba house even once. Doesn’t ask where Jayden is, doesn’t ask, doesn’t ask.

“He talked an awful lot without really saying anything,” Mia remarks quietly as Kevin drives them all back to their respective stops.

“Do you think he knows?” Emily replies, her tone almost hushed in shame.

“Knows what?” Kevin asks.

“That none of us have tried to talk to…to him.”

No one replies.

Antonio’s return is the final piece in their fucked up little broken puzzle, the piece that makes the whole picture look complete. Completely wrong, that is.

Because Antonio continues to not ask about Jayden. Or mention him. Or appear to think about him. And, God, Antonio’s a better actor than any of the rest of them because he goes on smiling and laughing and telling stories as if they’re not leaving an empty seat for someone who’s not coming. Mike feels…on edge. All the time. He looks at Antonio (at Mia, at Kevin, at Emily, at all four of them lined up with a gaping hole where someone in red should be) and feels like someone pushed him off a precipice only for him to find out that gravity doesn’t work anymore. It’s wrecking his concentration, honestly (did he used to stare at Kevin’s mouth that much?). Emily notices, he thinks. She places a lot of steading hands on him, makes him a lot of tea after hanging out with the others. But he also notices how erratic her pulse is, how much jumpier she is nowadays. The whole group is…off balance.

 

Emily, unsurprisingly, is the first to break.

It’s movie night, and Emily won the rock-paper-scissors game to be the one who picks it (though Mike has a sneaking suspicious that Kevin hesitated a little on the last round and let her win, but he’s not going to say anything about it). Mike is lazily thumbing through a game on his phone, Kevin is across the room adjusting the settings on the TV, Mia is popping popcorn in the kitchen, Antonio is supervising her popping popcorn in the kitchen (trust in her cooking skills is still a learning process), and Emily sits in the middle of the living room floor digging through the box of DVDs Antonio had brought.

Kevin is the one to ask “What’s up, Em?” when she stops digging and starts staring at the box instead. Mike frowns as he loses the game he was playing and drops his phone in his lap in favor of looking at Emily.

She shakes her head, as if to clear it, and plasters on a smile. “Nothing. I’m just having trouble picking.”

Mike opens his mouth to throw out a helpful “Something with zombies” but Kevin cuts across him before he can. “What’s the trouble?”

Her eyes scream her hesitation, and Mike wants nothing more than to snap at Kevin for bringing out discomfort in her, but she is talking before he can act on it. “Nothing really, I just—”

Antonio and Mia have found their way into the living room now (the popcorn smells mercifully normal), and their curious gazes let Mike know that they’ve heard the conversation up until now. Emily’s eyes seek out Mia’s, and she must find something in them because her gaze hardens a little bit before she looks back at Kevin. “Every movie I pick up… I keep thinking about whether or not Jayden would like it.”

There’s a beat of silence, and it takes everything in Mike not to look at Antonio.

“And then I keep thinking about how Jayden probably hasn’t seen any of these movies, and how we should at least… I don’t know, at least ask if he wants to be invited to things like this, shouldn’t we?” She looks so lost and little, sitting there on the floor, questioning herself. Mike wants to get up and go hug her, but something keeps him in his seat.

“I just feel guilty,” she continues softly, “about doing happy things. Because he probably isn’t doing anything happy right now.”

Mike is wildly unsure of how to respond to all this and for a panicked moment he wonders if anyone will know what to say. But leave it to Mia (beautiful, kind, caring Mia, who loves Emily so much that sometimes Mike has to wonder if he could ever love Emily as much as Mia does) to plop down right next to Emily on the ground and pull her into a hug and stroke her hair and tell her, “It’s not something to feel guilty about. Living on your own terms is never something to feel guilty about. Especially when terms had been dictated to you your whole life.”

A glance at Kevin, then at Antonio confirms that they can hear what Mike hears implied.

Emily must hear it too, because she replies (her face buried in Mia’s chest), “But he asked us. The first day, the first fight, he asked us if it was okay. If this is what we wanted. He never would have made us do it if we said we didn’t want to.”

Now, here is the silence Mike was dreading. No one knows what to say to that.

Mike knows that Jayden’s question all those years ago was an impossible question, a non-existent choice, and they were all products of a rhetoric so ingrained that how could they have said no?

_ He never would have made us do it, if we said we didn’t want to. _

And there’s never been a truer statement spoken, which is probably the worst part of it all.

 

Mike misses Jayden in the most inconvenient times.

Horseback riding. Why does he miss Jayden when he’s trying to learn how to ride horses? God, he hates his brain.

He’s up on one of Emily’s nicer horses (and he can hear Emily’s tinkling laugh at that statement, along with her voice saying “None of them are mean! You just like that one because she took the apple you offered her!”) when he hears someone approach the riding ring. He finishes his walk-trot-canter progression before letting the horse lead him over to who arrived.

“Your form doesn’t look half bad.” An almost compliment from Kevin, and his heart sings. (What is he, a twelve-year-old with a crush?)

He shrugs, like it doesn’t matter. “I’m trying to be better.”  _ I’m trying to get better _ is what he meant to say, but he’s not entirely sure what the difference is. There is one though. There is one.

Kevin leans against the railing and looks up at Mike, his gaze steady despite the sun that must be glinting in his eyes. Mike remembers sitting in the kitchen at home ( _ at Shiba house, not home, not home _ , he tries to correct himself) when Kevin had leaned over and whispered to Mike, “Do you think Antonio and Jayden talk without words sometimes?” Mike had looked at him like he was crazy at the time and shoved him off of the barstool next to him. He doesn’t think it’s as crazy now. Kevin keeps trying to tell Mike something with his eyes; Mike’s just too dumb to speak eye language.

Sometimes he and Emily will watch foreign movies without the subtitles and make up the words. That’s what he feels like he’s doing when he and Kevin look at each other.

_ It’s not his fault; you can stop blaming him,  _ Kevin will say.

Mike will scoff and return with,  _ If it’s not his fault, whose is it? Who am I going to blame? _

Kevin always knows too much for his own good.  _ You were the one who said yes when he asked. Blame yourself. _

 

He and Kevin end up sitting on the railing of the riding rink, passing a lemonade back and forth. Their conversation has been on and off, but Mike rarely feels awkward around Kevin anymore.

None of them really talk about rangering, for whatever reason. But Mike wants to this evening, with the press of Jayden weighing him down.

“What do you think we’d be doing right now if we had said no?” Mike asks, purposefully looking over the field at the barn instead of at Kevin.

Kevin snorts. “The world would be full of Sanzu River water, and we’d all be Nighloks or dead.”

Mike whistles, low and steady. “Wow. Ye of little faith in the Shibas.”

Kevin jostles him slightly. “Oh come on. It’s not like that. Ji just wouldn’t have called us if it wasn’t the only option.”

Mike is glad (insanely, euphorically glad) that Kevin seems to be in the mood to joke about this stuff. “Oh yeah? I think that you think you’re a better swordsman than Jayden.”

Kevin’s eyes glint with the smile his face doesn’t show. “Jayden is a perfectly capable swordsman.”

“Then why did you kill Deker?” It falls out of Mike’s mouth before he can stop it.

His face smooths out. “That was the right thing to do.”

Mike curses himself silently, but he figures since he’s here, he might as well complete the journey. “Oh, I’m not arguing that it was wrong. Just asking why. Deker’s fight was with Jayden. Could have been with Lauren, if he was paying attention at all to the power structure. But he wasn’t a threat to anyone outside the team, really. And Jayden never told any of us to fight him.” He pauses, trying to gauge the look on Kevin’s face. “Why did you leave your red ranger defenseless that day and go after her brother?”

Mike can’t figure out what Kevin’s feeling, and maybe Kevin can’t either because he turns to look at Mike and his eyes…

“Because he’s my friend, and I…”

Mike drops his gaze. “Yeah. I know.”

And he does, quite suddenly. Which is probably the worst part of it all.

 

Being alone with Antonio feels almost as dangerous as being alone with Kevin. But it’s different, just slightly. Like two different illegal activities. If Kevin is jaywalking, Antonio is speeding.

Mike tries not to get drunk with Antonio. Tipsy, maybe, but not full drunk. He’s too scared he’ll do something stupid like tell him that he loves him or kiss him. He’s not sure if those are things sober Mike wants to do yet.

Anyway, the point is that Mike is  _ tipsy _ , not drunk, when he props his head on his hands and says to Antonio, “You confuse the hell out of me.”

Antonio is generous enough (and also tipsy enough) to give that statement thought before asking, “How so?”

Mike sighs. He’s tired, and Antonio’s couch is soft, and he was planning on sleeping here anyway, and he kind of just wants to lie down. But he started the conversation so he figures he should finish it. “You, like… dedicated your whole life to one dude. And then you just stop talking to him! How do you do that? Wow. Inspiring, man.”

Antonio laughs at him, absurdly. Mike isn’t sure what he said was all that funny. Damn, maybe he  _ is _ drunk. “I haven’t stopped talking to him forever. Hopefully. I’m just waiting.”

Mike frowns at that. “Dude, didn’t you already wait, like, years before? Why don’t you go to him?”

“Cause it’s different now,” Antonio says.

Mike shakes his head (mostly to keep from falling asleep right there). “How so?”

Antonio tilts his head to consider this. He takes a while (Mike might’ve actually fallen asleep for, like, a minute), but he finally says, “Have you ever gone back to a place you visited a lot as a kid, and it feels so much smaller than it used to?” Antonio smiles, and it might be a little sad (but maybe it looks just like every smile Antonio has smiled since he decided to go on a six-month fishing trip). “Jayden is so much bigger in my memory.”

Mike is too sleepy and drunk (yeah, he’s probably drunk), to really process that so he just says, “If you’re waiting on an apology, you know it would be easier if you just went and apologized first.”

Antonio grins, but it never quite makes it to his eyes. “Easy’s boring.”

 

It’s movie night again, but no one is really paying attention. Everyone had individually rough weeks, and really all they want to do is fall asleep on each other. They are doing their best to achieve that right now on the floor of Mia’s apartment. Mike has Emily curled on top of him like a cat while his head is in Antonio’s lap who is curled into Kevin who has Mia in his lap who is holding hands with Emily.

The whole situation is doing funny things to Mike’s heart. He keeps pushing the feelings down for another time.

Antonio is the one to say suddenly, “Do you ever think about Lauren?”

Mike looks up at him. “Lauren? No. Why?”

He shrugs. “I just wonder. With her all alone out there.”

Mike feels irrationally angry at her even being brought up. “She’s been all alone her whole life. She’s fine.”

“Those statements contradict themselves,” Mia points out softly.

“Whatever. She’s not thinking about us so I’m not going to think about her.” He feels petulant. Why bring up  _ Lauren _ if they’re not even going to talk about Jayden?

“Mike,” Emily berates softly, gently, kindly (like she does with all things).

But not even Emily can soften him on this. “What? It’s true. She hasn’t written or called or texted or emailed any of us.”

Kevin puts his mug of tea down with a sigh. “She probably just talks to Ji and Jayden. We weren’t exactly the most open to her, if you remember.”

That makes Mike feel put in his place. Kevin says ‘we’ because he’s a good teammate, a good samurai. Sharing the blame with his comrade, even though Kevin was the one who stayed when the rest of them left, who was the first to accept her as leader, who asks after her whenever Ji calls.

He says ‘we,’ and it kind of feels like a slap.

Maybe Kevin felt the slap too because he shifts closer and starts carding his hand through Mike’s hair absently. It relaxes him. He falls asleep like that, with the feeling he’s dreading acknowledging swelling in his chest.

 

Mike had been angry for so long at some nameless faceless head of the clan for forcing him into a fight he didn’t want to be a part of.

But then he’d seen Jayden. and hate stopped being a word registered in his vocabulary for anyone except Xandred. He’d met the team (Jayden’s team) and he’d forgotten he ever hated anyone who wasn’t Xandred, who wasn’t the monster that stole the childhoods out from under these fine, fine soldiers.

But maybe he was still looking for a clan head to hate. Maybe his hatred had stayed suspended in space, looming and waiting for someone else to latch onto.

Hating Jayden wasn’t an option; hating Lauren was very much an option.

He didn’t know her, hadn’t fought with her, hadn’t bled with her all year. Hadn’t laughed with her, hadn’t forced her onto a roller coaster, hadn’t taught her how to have fun.

She hadn’t been there when Kevin had glowing eyes, hadn’t been there when Emily wouldn’t get up, hadn’t been there when Antonio couldn’t morph. Hell, she probably has no idea why Antonio was there. Antonio should have been the angriest, should have been the most dismissive. But he sat in the kitchen, laughing over tea with her.

Antonio is who he gets the angriest about, when he thinks back on rangering.

“Why?” Emily asks him after he carelessly brings it up over beers one night out.

He thinks the answer should be obvious, but he says anyway, “Well, Antonio didn’t  _ have _ to do it.”

“None of us  _ had _ to do it,” Mia says, sounding almost monotone. A scripted line from a show none of them wants to watch anymore.

“Jayden—” Kevin begins, but Mike cuts him off.

“—didn’t have to either. Someone else could have.”

“You mean Lauren could have.” Emily’s voice is quiet, whispered to her glass like always.

Mike is silent after that.

 

Later that night, while he’s failing at chasing sleep, Emily whispers, “Do you think he knows?”

Mike doesn’t bother to ask who. There’s only one ‘he’ they ever talk about anymore. He closes his eyes and presses his face into the top of her head.

_ Knows what? _ he wants to ask, nearly asks.  _ Knows we loved him? Knows we’d drop everything and come back in an instant if only he’d ask us? Knows how you wake up screaming for him sometimes? Knows I do too? Knows I don’t know what I’m doing anymore? _

“Knows he didn’t have to,” she clarifies. She always could read his mind.

“No,” he breathes against her hair. “I don’t think he has any idea.”

 

Mike wishes he could at least think that this isn’t how it’s meant to go. But this feels like fate.

Like if it happened any other way, it would be wrong. It was always meant to be the six of them, always meant to be Jayden leading the team, always meant to be Emily instead of Serena, always meant to be Antonio in gold, always meant to be Kevin at Mike’s throat, always meant to be Mia burning something in the kitchen.

(Always meant to be Mike panicking about falling in love with them.)

 

He thinks maybe he should get a therapist, then quickly dismisses that idea. What would he even say?  _ Hi, I’m Mike, and I was a power ranger, and I might be in love with all of my teammates, but first and foremost my team leader. Please advise. _

It sounds way less stupid when Emily whispers it against his lips one night. Well, not exactly that. But something similar. More eloquent, or whatever.

It only makes him pause for a moment, a brief, brief moment, but in that moment she says, “And please don’t tell me I’m reading the way you look at them and talk about him wrong,” and then he’s shaking his head and pressing kisses down her neck and whispering over and over that she’s right that he loves them, he loves them, he loves them.

She asks him to say it again in the morning, say it again making breakfast, say it again feeding the horses, say it again say it again say it again, until he lifts her up on a hay bale so that she’s eye level with him and tells her she’s being ridiculous. She giggles and says, “Sorry. I just want to be sure I didn’t dream it.”

He smiles at her. “You didn’t dream it.”

Kissing her should feel different now, shouldn’t it? Now that he’s admitted to her that she’s not the only person he loves more than his own life?

But it’s the same. The same rush, the same warmth, the same feeling of home. But now, there’s anticipation behind it.

 

Emily convinces him to visit Shiba house after that.

 

He’s defeated monsters, stared down nightmares, survived the end of the world, and told Emily he loved her, but getting the courage to knock on the door to Shiba house (his  _ home _ ) is probably the scariest thing he’s ever done.

Jayden swings the door open and stares at him with eyes that look ten years older, not one. Mike wasn’t expecting him to be right there at the door, wasn’t ready to face him, not ready to talk to him and oh, God, he should have brought Emily.

“Mike,” Jayden says, his tone only tinged with surprise.

“Where’s Ji?” is all Mike manages to get out. He might pass out, really.

“Vacation.” Leave it to Jayden to not waste words.

“Oh.” He’s not sure what he’s supposed to say or do or where to put his hands or if his breathing is still normal and wow, has the sun been that bright all day?

“Do you want me to take a message?” Jayden finally asks. He sounds infinitely more calm than Mike feels, and is he joking? He can’t possibly be joking. Jayden Shiba doesn’t know how to joke.

“No, no, I, ah—”  _ I’m not here to see Ji _ , is what comes next. “I just—He, uh, promised to teach me chess sometime, and I was wondering if he was free today, but, uh, clearly not so I’ll just be…going.”

Mike really is a God-awful liar, and Jayden knows it, and Mike could swear that Jayden’s face is tinged with a smile as he says, “Well, since you came all the way up here, I’m happy to show you the basics.” Jayden steps back to open the door more widely.

 

(Mike sometimes wonders if he was wrong to step through.)

 

They really do play chess that day. And the following weekend. And the next Wednesday. Jayden jokes (he actually  _ jokes _ ) that Mike is becoming a regular at the Shiba House Weekly Chess Class. Mike laughs, and it feels like the first genuine laugh since he moved out.

Mike tries not to be completely obviously in love with him, but he’s unsure if it’s working or not.

After about a month, Jayden starts to ask about them. One at a time. Like he’s easing himself into it.

He’ll do it casually, like he’s hoping Mike won’t notice. Mike always has to swallow a smile before he answers. It’s always simple stuff.

_ Yes, Mia’s doing well at culinary school. Kevin’s competition? It went fine, thank you for asking; the results will be in by tomorrow after the last round. Emily’s fine, Serena’s great, the chickens don’t hate me as much anymore. _

Stuff like that.

Surprisingly, Jayden wants to hear about everything they’ve done without him over the past… year? Has it been a year? Mike is losing track. Jayden doesn’t directly ask (of course he doesn’t); he just gently pulls the stories out of Mike. His statements feel like questions and his questions feel like statements, and Mike always ends up recounting their best nights to him.

Mike tries not to notice that he doesn’t ask about Antonio. He really, really tries. But of course it comes up, and it’s Mike’s stupid fault because he talks too much, he knows he does, but he can’t shut himself up, he really can’t, and so he’s mid story when he just—

“And all of this happens before Antonio even shows up, and you know he encourages Mia like no one can, so he shows up and reads the whole situation within, like, two seconds, and then  _ he’s _ in the chair across from Mia, counting her shots over the crowd chanting and—”

It’s around here that he realizes. He almost drops the chess piece he’s holding. Breath stops coming into his lungs.

Jayden just looks up at him, calmly, calmly, calmly. Like he is with all things. “And then what happened? Did she win?”

As if Mike hadn’t just blown up a land mine in the middle of the kitchen.

Mike finishes the story, but he’s lost all his ease. His brain keeps telling his tongue to avoid Antonio’s name, and he ends up stumbling over the details.

But Jayden is gracious and acts like he doesn’t notice. He asks all the same questions he usually does, shows all the usual interest he usually does, laughs at all the parts he should (and, God, someone should bottle Jayden’s laugh. Sell it by the gallon; let people drown themselves in it).

Several conversations later, and Mike can almost forget that he nearly caught the paper house on fire. Their chess session goes late; Mike notices the house dim as the sun sets. Jayden is well on his way to winning what will probably be their final game for the night when he asks it.

“Has Antonio…” and Mike nearly flinches because the answer is probably no. No, Antonio doesn’t ask about you. No, Antonio isn’t heartbroken and pining, but no, Antonio hasn’t been dating and no, Antonio’s not over you.

(Mike’s brain helpfully supplies,  _ But yes, I want to talk about you, and I’m heartbroken and pining. _ )

Jayden hesitates on the name for a long time, probably picking which question he wants to ask. He finally shakes his head and moves his chess piece. “I don’t know. Has Antonio been okay?”

Mike almost wants to cry. Leave it to Jayden to care first about his friend’s well being, second about their status as his friend.

Mike shrugs. He wants to be careful, doesn’t want to break Jayden’s heart more than he has to. “He smiles and jokes like normal. He has a job at a restaurant that he doesn’t hate. He’s still overdramatic and needy and wears clothes that could stop traffic. I’d say he’s okay.” Jayden nods, fiddling with one of the pieces he captured from Mike instead of looking up at him. Mike feels compelled to add, “He doesn’t ask about you, but I’m not sure he knows that I come here.” Jayden nods again, like he expected this. Mike feels tense, so he blows out air and laughs weakly. “You know, you’re a hard person to love, Jayden Shiba.”

Jayden’s lips press together in what passes for a smile. “Lauren would have been easier.”

This makes Mike pause. “Easier?”

“Easier to love.” Jayden shrugs like this should be obvious.

Mike thinks on that statement, using his chess move to cover his lack of response.

He settles on, “Easy’s boring.”

Something like recognition flashes behind Jayden’s eyes. Mike gets the insane urge to cry.

 

It’s close to midnight, and he whispers to Emily, “Sometimes I wonder how Lauren lived with herself, putting Jayden through that. You know he only ended up this way cause she was in hiding.”

“Mike,” Emily chastises. He feels like he always needs chastising these days. “You know she had to.”

“She could have said no.” The words sound empty in his ears. Like someone he disagrees with said them.

Emily doesn’t dispute that. Instead she says, “Do you honestly think we would have loved him the same way if he had been different?”

The answer is of course no, but Mike doesn’t respond except by pulling her closer.

 

The rest of them probably feel some kind of change in Mike. Kevin starts looking at him with questions in his eyes, questions that Mike still (frustratingly) can’t decode. Mia looks at him, and sometimes he wonders if she knows. She always knows things about people’s feelings before they do, somehow. Antonio starts avoiding looking at him, and Mike knows that he knows.

(Antonio saw him leaving one day.)

 

Mike doesn’t ask Antonio what he was doing on that street. Antonio doesn’t ask Mike why he was leaving Shiba house. Jayden remains an unwelcome topic of conversation.

Mike mentions it to Jayden.

(He forgets to wonder how Jayden went from the one person he couldn’t talk to, to the only person he could talk to.)

Jayden hums noncommittally, then moves his chess piece. Mike keeps looking at him expectantly until Jayden glances up. “He didn’t come in, if you were wondering,” he tells Mike with finality.

“Do you think he regrets it?” Mike blurts out, his brain failing to realize what his mouth was saying until it was already said.

“Regrets not coming in? Or regrets coming in the first time?”

Mike pauses to consider. “Does it matter?”

Jayden hums again, considering. “No, I don’t think so. Either way, regret isn’t an emotion Antonio wears well.”

Mike nods, accepting this, and finally bends his head to make his move on the chess board.

They play in silence for a while longer before Jayden asks, “Do you think the others regret coming in the first time?”

(Mike tries not to notice how he’s excluded from that question.)

“Does it matter?” he echoes instead. “You asked us if we wanted to; you didn’t make us do it. If we regret anything, it’s our own fault.”

The statement feels wrong, even as he understands that he’s disagreed with that line of thought before. It isn’t until now, sitting across a small table from Jayden, that he realizes what Emily was trying to tell him, why it couldn’t have been Lauren.

_ I only wanted to do it because you were doing it, too. I only said yes because you were the one asking. _

(God, he really  _ had _ been a dick to Lauren.)

 

As he’s leaving the house that night, Jayden stops him and asks (softly, softly), “Would you say no? If I asked you again, would you say no?”

Maybe this wouldn’t have been such an easy question a year ago, but now…

Mike smiles at him (and he wonders if it looks as sad as Antonio’s does).

“Regret isn’t an emotion I wear well.”

 

He’s not-drunk with Antonio again, and he has a song about broken promises stuck in his head.

They’re both lying on the living room floor at Emily’s house, but she’s out with her family tonight. If she were there, Mike suspects she would ask why they’re lying on the floor instead of the couch. Mike’s not sure he has an answer.

The TV is on (background noise), and Antonio is fiddling with his phone (also kind of background noise), and Mike is staring at the empty bottle of alcohol, not sure if he wants it to be full again.

“Why didn’t Emily go with you?”

It takes Mike a moment to realize that Antonio has spoken, another moment to realize that Antonio has spoken  _ to him _ , and a final moment to realize when Antonio is referring to.

“Oh,” Mike says simply when all the pieces click into place.  _ Why didn’t Emily go with him to the Shiba house? _ “She’s never asked to. I think she doesn’t wanna overwhelm him.” Antonio hums a noise that sounds almost like agreement, still fiddling with his phone. Mike continues, staring at the ceiling now. “Is that why you didn’t come in?”

Antonio hums again. Mike’s not sure what else to say, not sure if he agrees that Jayden would be overwhelmed, not sure if he agrees that that was the reason Antonio didn’t come in.

He’s not sure how long they sit in silence, but eventually he hears the words, “I think I’m in love with Jayden,” fall out of his own mouth, and he’s not exactly sure how.

But what’s even more confusing is how Antonio just hums  _ again _ , like he somehow already knew this. “Welcome to the club. Mia actually has a T-shirt design ready; I think she’s gonna get them for Christmas.” Antonio shifts slightly to finally look at Mike. “Should I tell her to order Emily one too?”

Mike stares. And stares. And wonders if he heard correctly. And stares. Antonio stares back, expectantly. “I’m not…joking,” Mike finally says.

“Neither am I,” Antonio replies easily. “Mia may have been kidding about the actual t-shirts, though.”

“I’m in love with Jayden, and probably the rest of you, too,” Mike re-affirms, just to be sure.

Antonio smiles at him (a real, actual, pre-fishing trip smile) and says, “Tell me again in the morning when we’re sober, and maybe I’ll say it back.”

(Mikes does. And Antonio does. Emily does, too, and Mike finds out that tasting Emily’s chapstick off of Antonio’s lips is absolutely intoxicating.)

The rest of them get confessions with very little fanfare, since the first thing Antonio does is change the group chat’s name to “group of idiots hopelessly in love with jayden shiba” so everyone else apparently knows what’s transpired pretty quickly.

Mike figured Mia and Kevin would be more awkward about the whole thing than Antonio, but it turns out he was the last to the party. The other three had been discussing the whole situation for months now, just as long (if not longer) than Mike and Emily had been discussing it.

Mike could cry at how stupid he feels for not bringing it up sooner.

And that’s how Mike’s relationship (population: 2) ended up as Mike’s relationship (population: 5, pending 6).

 

Not a whole lot actually changes in their lives. They send more heart emojis in the group chat, Kevin laughs a lot more, they call their get togethers date nights, and generally just feel better, but nothing majorly life changing happens. Unless you call the boundless happiness Mike feels in his chest at the realization that his best friends in the whole world all love him back majorly life changing.

(Mike probably would call it that.)

 

He feels like maybe he should feel more awkward and jealous, watching Emily kiss Mia goodbye after a date night or sit on Kevin’s lap during movie night or giggle when Antonio leans in close to whisper in her ear, but mostly what he feels is happy and stupidly in love and a vague ache of longing which he identifies eventually as wishing Jayden were part of all this.

 

“Are you ready to see them?” Mike asks Jayden that week when Jayden casually asks after the team. Jayden looks up from the chessboard sharply, a question hovering in his eyes. Mike shrugs. “I think they’re ready to see you, if you’re ready too.”

Slowly, very slowly, Jayden nods. “I’d like it very much if they came to see me, yes.”

Mike smiles at him, softly (his heart feels like it might burst). “Jayden. All you have to do is ask.”

 

They go one at a time, at Emily’s insistence. “So we don’t overwhelm him.” (Mike feels slightly gratified that he had been right about that one.)

So they all go. One at a time to visit him, visits spread out over weeks. And they go back. No one really talks about what they say to him or what happens, but slowly, slowly, slowly, the tension seems to bleed out of the group.

(Mike notices it bleeds out of Jayden, too, as their chess games continue.)

This continues on for weeks and weeks until Emily asks Mike if he’ll come with her to drop off some flowers at Shiba house, and then another day Mia goes with Antonio to play a card game that can’t be played with just two people, and they end up shifting from their strict one person at a time visitation schedule to visiting in twos and threes. It takes weeks after this before Jayden brings it up to Mike, Emily, and Mia as they’re leaving one night.

They’re halfway out the door, but Jayden’s voice halts them in their tracks. “Maybe,” he starts, then stops, looks troubled, and starts again, even less confidently. “Maybe everyone could come over for dinner sometime.”

The three of them exchange looks. Emily slips her hand into Mike’s and smiles blindingly at Jayden. “I’m sure everyone would love that. We’ll ask Kevin and Antonio when they’re free.”

Jayden still looks painfully awkward, standing in the entryway, and there’s a look in his eyes Mike can’t quite name. “I—” he starts, then stops and shakes his head, like he’s trying to clear it. “Mentor won’t…Ji won’t be home on Thursday. He goes to a bridge club.” Mike would laugh and crack a joke about that, but Mia cuts him a look, silencing him as Jayden stumbles on. “You could… If we could try for Thursday, that would…” He seems utterly incapable of finishing the sentence or looking them in the eye.

Mia saves him (of course). “We’ll make sure everyone is free on Thursday.” She says it gently, like she’s talking to a wounded animal or something. Then, more brightly, “I’ll bring a dish!”

Mike can’t stop the groan at the words, even though he’s personally lived through several of her most recent dishes. Force of habit. It breaks the weirdness Jayden had settled into, though, because he laughs, and Mike’s heart swells at it (even as Mia and Emily simultaneously elbow him in the ribs).

 

It’s not until they’re walking away from the house that Emily asks, “Did anyone else feel like he was trying to ask us on a date?” Mike and Mia exchange glances, and Mia grabs Mike’s other hand.

 

That night, Mike stares down at Jayden’s contact in his phone for far too long before sending him a single text. Short, sweet, to the point. Kevin would be proud, Mike thinks vaguely as he puts the phone down for the night.

Mike

[11:36pm]

Don’t forget: all you have to do is ask. We would say yes again.

 

Everyone makes it a point to be free on Thursday. When they get there, it’s awkward for approximately three seconds before Antonio is complaining about the lack of good alcohol in the house, and Mia’s lamenting the new stove Ji got because how is she supposed to heat up anything on it, and Kevin is rolling his eyes, and Emily is sitting on the counter laughing, and Mike feels everything in chest unravel. They’re going to be fine. They’re going to be fine. Everything is going to be fine.

It feels like they never left.

After dinner, they’re lounging around the living room, and Mia is telling a story about a time when Antonio got black-out drunk with her and called a stripper his mom’s name, and everyone is roaring with laughter, and Antonio says, “If I don’t remember it, I reserve the right to pretend like it didn’t happen,” and Mike wonders if he’s ever felt this happy before.

Jayden says it in a quiet voice, so quiet that it might have gotten lost under the laughter had he been in a room with anyone other than five people hopelessly in love with him. “I missed this.”

Five pairs of eyes swivel to him, and the laughter dies. Jayden, of course, looks uncomfortable and drops his gaze. He picks at a string on his chair absently. “I missed…you. All of you. Being here. Like this.”

There’s a moment of silence, then, “We missed you too, Jayden,” softly, from Mia. One of the things Mike loves most about Mia is her ability to be so soft with the things she loves and yet so tough and uncompromising at the same time. He wants to go over and kiss her (he’s getting better at categorizing his impulses these days).

He doesn’t, though; instead he stares at Jayden. He can almost hear the phrase he’s been turning over in his head all night thrumming through his skin.  _ Just ask us, just ask us, just ask us. _

Jayden finally looks up and looks at Mike, almost like he heard him. Mike stares back for a moment before asking, “What is it, Jayden?”

“Move back in with me?” Jayden says it all at once, like he’s afraid of it and wants it to get away from him and out into the world.

Mike finally looks away from Jayden and to his other teammates, a question tinging his gaze. Kevin makes eye contact with him, and Mike finally ( _ finally _ ) understands what he’s saying with his eyes. Mike looks at Emily, and she gets the message, too.

“We’d love to, Jayden,” she starts, still looking at Mike. Her gaze falls back to Jayden as she finishes, “But you should probably know that we’re all in love with you, first.” She smiles a little tight smile at the end of the statement. Mike’s heart feels like it’s in his throat.

“Have been, for a long time,” Antonio adds, his eyes trained on the floor instead of any particular person. He shrugs, trying for nonchalance. “In case you didn’t notice for whatever reason.” Jayden looks adorably confused, but Mike doesn’t really have the capacity to appreciate it right now with how nervous he feels.

“…All of you?” is what Jayden finally decides to say.

“Yes,” Kevin answers, looking levelly at Jayden.

It takes a minute (a painful, painful minute, during which Mike definitely doesn’t breathe), but a smile slowly breaks across Jayden’s face, the way morning breaks across the trees surrounding Shiba house. “Okay.”

A pause.

Then,

“Okay? That’s all you have to say? Okay?” Mike doesn’t mean to sound angry, it’s just—

Jayden smiles even wider. “Okay, I love you too.”

Mike’s brain stops in its tracks. He looks at the other four, and they have similarly dumbstruck expressions.

He’s not sure what to do next, not sure what he even wants to happen next until Kevin breaks the silence by saying—

“Anybody else feel like it wouldn’t be fair unless Antonio gets to kiss him first?”

 

It isn’t until much, much later, when they’ve made a pillow/blanket/bedsheets pile on the dojo floor to sleep in, and they’re all tangled up into one big mess, and there’s a bad movie playing on someone’s laptop that none of them are paying attention to, that Mike thinks to ask (a pretend whine in his voice), “Oh, God, does this mean we have to tell our families now? How are we gonna do that?”

Mia scoffs. “Forget them. How are we going to tell  _ Ji _ ?”

Ji is a sobering thought for Mike, but apparently a hilarious one for pretty much everyone else, and with Emily laughing in his lap, how can he not laugh too?

 

Ji takes it better than expected. Maybe because he’s not directly responsible for any of their life choices anymore, maybe because he’s a lot mellower now that he’s “retired,” or maybe he’s just secretly glad they’re all together again and doesn’t care in what capacity. Mike hopes it’s the last one, despite the amount of griping Ji does about the laundry load increasing again.

Ji is a lot less intrusive of a presence than Mike remembers him being. Not that Ji was ever really intrusive; just ever-present (“a looming threat,” Mike used to joke, and Mia would slap his arm sharply). He’s just not…around as much. He still goes to bridge club on Thursdays, and he has a book club on Tuesdays, both of which usually wraps up late in the nights and usually they’ve all gone to bed by then. He goes to the mountains every weekend, which at first Mike found odd, until he realized that the only time all six of them were in the same place at the same time were usually weekends. And he realized Ji knew exactly what he was doing the time he came home from the store on a Friday, found them all home, and announced, “I’ll be leaving for the mountains early, then. Try not to have too much fun, but if you do, please wipe the counters off afterward. I like my cooking areas clean.”

Jayden’s face has never been redder, and Antonio has never laughed harder.

 

It’s not always all six of them at the same time, obviously. Their schedules almost never line up except the weekends, so usually it’s fair game for whoever is home to be with whoever else is home. (Home, home, home: Mike likes to call it that as much as possible now that he’s allowed to.) Sleeping is twice as fun now than it used to be because it’s hardly ever the same people in the same bed twice. They find their favorites after a while: Mike will always hold a soft spot for sleeping with Emily pressed against his neck, but he finds that he loves the feeling of Antonio pressed up against him almost as much. Kevin is a nightmare to actually sleep with, so much so that Mike sometimes flat out refuses to let him in if there’s not another person to wedge in between them. Mia and Antonio don’t mind Kevin’s weird sleeping habits like kicking and stealing blankets and waking up at the ass crack of dawn o’clock, so usually Mike kicks Kevin out to their rooms.

Anyway, sleeping is much more of an ordeal that it used to be but also a million times more exciting.

 

Kissing is also a million times more exciting. Especially when it feels like a game.

Emily likes Mia’s strawberry lipgloss, but Mike argues that her lipstick is more fun while Kevin claims the chapstick she keeps in her right drawer tastes the best.

So one day Antonio pulls out all of Emily’s and Mia’s cosmetics and orders Jayden to “pull out all the lip stuff—we’re gonna settle this.”

There’s lots of giggling as the six of them sit on the dojo floor and apply different lip products to one another. It’s strange, tasting Emily’s apple butter lip shine combining with Mia’s red lipstick on his own lips as he kisses Kevin, but it’s not a bad strange. It’s a good strange. A repeatable strange. So he does, messily smearing the nearest chapstick on the nearest person’s collarbone and then kissing it off.

Of course, this devolves into a pseudo-war of smearing lip stuff on various body parts, but it’s fun.

Everything about this is just too much  _ fun _ . Mike feels like he’s cheating the universe somehow. (But he’s not gonna tell.)

 

“Lauren’s coming back in town next week,” Jayden announces idly one morning, his gaze still fixed on the newspaper in front of him as he eats the cereal Mia provided.

Antonio, who is currently trying to eat his own cereal while semi-sitting in a (pretend disgruntled) Kevin’s lap, looks up suddenly. “She is?” Jayden nods.

“And she’s…coming here, I assume,” Mike asks. Jayden nods again, apparently not seeing the issue Mike is.

“Have you…told her about…us?” Emily asks delicately. She’s currently perched on the counter, looking much more alert than she has any right to be at 9am on a Saturday.

Jayden’s eyes drift up to her at that question, seeming to think about it for the first time. “No. No, I guess I haven’t.” A brief look for panic flits across his face.

Mia drops her now-empty cereal bowl in the sink and says definitely. “Well. I guess she’ll be in for a surprise then.”

“I always did think she was kinda hot…” Antonio muses idly.

“Agreed,” Mike says immediately.

Jayden cuts them both a look while Emily starts giggling. “You two are definitely not allowed to try to date  _ my sister _ . You already have two perfectly fine girlfriends.”

Mia cocks her head to the side, pretending to consider. “But I only have one perfectly fine girlfriend. Does that mean I can try to date your sister?”

“Ooh,” Emily coos, kicking her feet a little in agreement. “Me too!”

Jayden stares at them both for a half a second before bolting up from his seat. The girls both shriek with laughter and bolt out of the room, hand in hand, with Jayden pursuing. Kevin shakes his head, and finally relents to Antonio by snaking his hand around his waist and pulling him fully into his lap.

Lauren will be fine with all of this, Mike knows. And he wouldn’t really try to date her. Not without at least being her actual friend first. Besides, Jayden’s right. He’s already got two fine girlfriends and three fine boyfriends, and dealing with one Shiba is more than enough for him.

The sun continues to rise over Shiba house. The birds chirp, the world spins, and the team that was once the Samurai Power Rangers love each other.

Mike’s never felt more at peace.

**Author's Note:**

> just btw mia totally buys them those matching shirts that say "im hopelessly in love with jayden" and buys jayden one that says "im jayden"
> 
> as always u can hmu on tumblr @ powerprincesses and twitter @katmanxs
> 
> comment ur fav line or yell at me on ur social media platform of choice. tysm.


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